Guild Wars 2

Hello, fellow thieves.

We’ve been taking our guild to Dungeon runs for multiple times now, and most of the time get our butts kicked during the 3rd boss or so. Massive AOE and autoattack damage do no good for a thief, and the one or two stealth skills we have for losing aggro aren’t good enough when the boss jumps from person to person in an instant.

I haven’t seen many thieves in my random Dungeon run groups, nor have I seen many different playstyles other than get close with daggers/stay away with pistols and spam heartseeker/bleed skills. In our guild group us two thieves have favored damage above all else, which usually has led to our demise in the more lenghtier bosses and their instakill attacks.

(TL;DR all the questions without the blabbering)
I know there’s a stickied build thread, and I did post a question there, too. Instead of just “POST YER BUILDS PLEASE” I’d like to ask you all: how do you usually play in a dungeon? Do you try to take a more supportive or an all out offensive role?
Is there a certain weapon combination you favor above all else?
Also, even with the reasoning above: what kind of a build do you see as a good build for dungeons? Is it the survivability when going with a vitality/toughness combo, or more like a glass cannon build (power/crit/cond)?
Also what intrigues me is: Do you see much use for shadowstep skills in dungeons?

Discuss?

You mentioned that the thieves you’d played with were very damage focused. This is a pretty easy mistake to make, as in most RPGs the Thief/Rogue/Ninja/Whatever is a pretty pure damage dealer.

While a talented Thief can certainly deal a lot of damage under the right conditions, surviving to do so with a pure damage build is much more difficult than it is for other classes. In addition to this, the Thief has very powerful utility and situational tanking abilities. Give the choice between the two, the support/tank thief is really the best use for the class in most Dungeon scenarios.

Hell, in PUGs, Scorpion Wire has to be the best utility in the game, hands-down.

Well… I don’t (personally) believe ANY class should go pure damage. The amount of health/defense the enemies have mean you won’t be able to drop them quickly.(generally speaking) You have to be ready to do a couple different things all on demand.

For this reason, what me and a ranger have done, is we will (while fighting general hordes) basically layer traps. If they are hard to kill in a straight fight, then leave about 8 traps for them to run through.

Then bombard them with AOE damage as they run hobbled through traps.

Then when it comes time for boss fight, switch over to high damage single target abilities.

If we weren’t talking dungeons, then sure.. glass cannons are more viable in general PVE or WvW heck even PVP in some cases..

I generally (In dungeons) prefer a bow to anything else.. you have to be careful with aggro but, it has a lot of utility/effectiveness.

As far as shadowsteps in dungeons.. I could be wrong but, I feel like they have been “nerfed” some. I think at some point as long as you could get the pointer to be green, you could clear a small jump.. but, I think they removed that ability..

I will admit, I do use my bows shadowshot ability to avoid some traps though.

And being totally honest.. I sometimes feel a bit useless as a thief in dungeons.. I frequently feel like I don’t bring enough direct damage to really be useful, I don’t bring enough control/condition damage to really outshine other classes.

It may just be my perceived issues or what not.. I’ll let you know once I have another class or two to give a better comparison.

I run a 0/30/0/20/20 build pretty much all around (PvE and Dungeons). Shadow Refuge is a must for bigger fights, and Scorpion Wire has its uses as well. I take Signet of Agility because it’s condition removal for up to 5 conditions for you and anyone around you on a 30s CD. Sometimes instead of Scorpion Wire I take Caltrops, Smoke Screen, or Blinding Power (another AoE stealth skill).

For weapons, I usually take Sword/Pistol and either another Pistol (for single target focus) or a Shortbow for the Area Weakness combo (Choking Gas + Cluster Shot). Additionally, the Smoke Field on Pistol 5 is great for dungeon mobs, especially if you can get them focused on you.

I use Withdrawal for a heal most of the time, but if the dungeon has me on precarious footing I’ll switch to Hide in Shadows. It’s a bigger heal with regen on a longer CD, but it doesn’t flip me off of ledges.

Dagger Storm is the go-to elite here. it’s an ages-long whirl finisher that combines well with Shadow Refuge (and any other thing in the huge chaos of fields in big fights).

I’m definitely going to have to try that Doom. +1

One more thing (my edit ability is broken somehow…):

At 80, I’ve been using Valkyrie gear (Armor and Weapons). I’ve found that stacking Power and Crit Damage (with the Vitality there too) has provided a nice bump in my non-crit and crit damage output. Runes I’ve been using Superior Lyssa (6). Jewelery isn’t worked out yet, but I’m trying to focus them on precision to get my crit chance above 50% at 80.

Sigils have been Superior Perception, but those don’t work in dungeons so well if you spend a lot of time on your rear. I’ve been considering changing them all to Superior Force or Accuracy for the overall damage bonus or crit chance improvement, depending on how outfitting myself with Rare 80 Jewelry affects my stats.

We tried a venom build today.
30/0/30/10/0 was my build. Mostly venom based traits and used only venoms in my utility slots.

The good thing was that all the venoms I put up would heal me for around 320-370 damage each time I hit with a venom applied, and also it would grant up to 8 stacks of might to all my party members.
The biggest thing, though, was that the venom effects applied to nearby party members. Having the bosses in constant poison/chill/immobilize or a 2-4 second stone with well timed venoms was quite useful on bosses we needed to kite.

Alas, the survivability ends pretty much there. The venoms all have over 30 sec cooldowns, and even though they heal, it isn’t much. Didn’t try using the healing signet, nor did I have huge healing power bonuses, so those might count towards the healing too. Not sure about healing power affecting life steal through the venoms — anybody got info on that?

We had an idea with a guildmate that we both take almost the same build with venoms being the big deal, and stack 16-18 stacks of might to each party member with the venoms. Didn’t get a chance to try this yet, though…

Thanks for the good replies. I see there are quite many similarities in the way people play thief in Dungeons. Haven’t really seen much use for traps outside of PVP, though…

I am a glasscannon so to say, and I dont feel I have any problems in dungeons really. You do need to know that you cant play Rambo and let the warriour/guardian/necro/mesmer/pets tank instead.

My advice for aspiring PvE Thieves would be:

1. Always have a ranged weapon ready. This applies to all classes really. Melees get gibbed constantly by so much crap it’s unbelievable. 90% of the time you’re better off at ranged. That said, Sword + Pistol does significantly more damage in PvE than any ranged weapon.

2. Know your utility. You should know how to use your utility skills to maximum effect. Know your combo fields and possibly even those of other classes. Know little tricks like where you can pull will Scorpion Wire.

3. Adapt your traits. No need to constantly respec but you can exchange your Major Traits out of combat as much as you like. Use that flexibility to your advantage. If you don’t change a few skills and traits on a regular basis you’re not doing it right.

4. Don’t go all out glass-cannon. Yes, some people will defend using full Berserker gear and damage does have its place. But it’s not all that important. Survivability on the other hand is important. Your gear choices and spec should reflect that.

here is the build i use in PvE|

I like this build alot because it provides excellent damage on both single targets and AoE while also providing some pretty useful group support.

Main Weapon Set is Dagger/Dagger. Secondary Weapon is Shortbow.

equipment selection is a mix of Carrion (power/vitality/cond damage) and Rampager (power/precision/cond damage). breakdown is like this:

Head: Rampager
Shoulders: Rampager
Body: Carrion
Gloves: Rampager
Legs: Carrion
Boots: Rampager
Amulet: Carrion
Earrings: 1 Carrion, 1 Rampager
Rings: 1 Carrion, 1 Rampager

my unbuffed crit rate (at level 80) is about 33%. my unbuffed condition damage is about 900. my unbuffed health is about 16000. toughness is a bit low though so the build can’t take frequent hits, it just has enough health to not get 2 shotted. you still have to play carefully. DPS is very high as your power stat is boosted by everything and you’ve enhanced both your condition damage and crit rate. some will argue that it is more efficient to use Berserker over Rampager and focus entirely on crits, but I find condition damage necessary for good AoE with a Thief so I think its very worthwhile.

explanation of build playstyle:

• main single target damage dealing comes from Cloak and Dagger + Backstab. the backstab automatically crits due to Hidden Killer trait, so this actually becomes a very serious damage source. It is also extremely useful for the group because Cloak and Dagger applies 3 stacks of Vulnerability and the Cloaked in Shadow trait causes your Stealth to trigger an AoE blind, so you do alot to control the enemy you are fighting against by stealthing over and over again like this.
• main AoE tactic is to drop caltrops and then spam either Death Blossom or shortbow attacks (chocking gas and cluster bomb), depending on whether or not its safe to be near what you’re AoEing. Death Blossom does more DPS so its preferred when available.
• party support is provided in several different ways here. have already mentioned the blind spam that comes from using Cloak and Dagger (with Cloaked in Shadows) repeatedly. thats a big help. this build also has a huge amount of movement control over the enemy with Caltrops and Dancing Dagger to cripple and Scorpion Wire to pull (into a caltrops field usually). Finally, Shadow Refuge is just a must have for any Thief going into a dungeon. its a combo field, a reviving safe spot, a heal skill, and an oh-kitten button.

Finetuned the venom build a bit, and chose Shadow Refuge and Smoke Screen as my other two other utility skills along with Ice Drake venom to chill and Basilisk venom to turn the enemy to stone for a couple of seconds.

It worked pretty well, didn’t fall much except when all the skills were on cooldown. Definitely better than having all venoms, that’s for sure.

Also if you haven’t yet noticed, Smoke screen is the best thief skill in the game when it comes to surviving ranged bosses and mobs with projectiles! With two thieves we were able to keep an almost constant smoke screen up while at the same time we pulled the melee mobs to our side of the screen one by one.

And I agree, Shadow Refuge is a must.